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August 29, 2009

Meet the correspondents: TOKYO > Kumi Matsukawa

"Hi, I'm Kumi. I was a little child who would draw on anything and everything if there was space to draw. Now I am an illustrator. I mainly draw storyboards for TV commercials. At the same time I teach watercolor and pastel in my neighborhood. Both works entail sketching.

However, for a long time I considered sketches to be merely a training or of secondary importance. It was since 2008 when I participated in one of the World Wide SketchCrawl events that I found the joy of sketching and sharing. In other words, I discovered how much potential sketches themselves have. Since then, I am hooked on sketching.

I enjoy sketching on location very much. Landscape, buildings, people, animals, plants. It's like a dialogue with the subject. For example, when I draw an old tree, I feel as if I am listening to its story. An old tree — like a old man — has a long, complicated story and what I do is transcribe it in the form of a sketch. The story has ups and downs like its branches do, and it has intricate details exactly the way its leaves look. So I try to capture as much details as possible, but I sometimes have to sum up some of them due to the circumstances. Or I may amplify something interesting. But that's not an exaggeration, just a result of the struggle to earnestly focus my attention to it.

I live in Kanagawa prefecture, where famous tourist spots are, such as Yokohama, Enoshima, Kamakura, Hakone and so on. I also go sketching to Tokyo. The view of Tokyo is not as photogenic as other prominent cities are. But has a lot of interesting, new and old places to draw. For instance, there is a new tower called Tokyo Sky Tree. When it is completed in 2012 it will be one of the tallest in the world. So I'm planing to sketch it on a regular basis.

I also enjoy very much seeing other sketchers works depicting things with unique style. Their various approaches always impress me, inspire me!

robbe, as for people are staring at the wave, at that day at that moment we were prohibited from entering water for the security reason, because later that evening they held a large scale firework festival .